1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrophoresis apparatus which analyzes a trace amount of protein, nucleic acid, drug and the like at high speed and with high resolution in biochemical, molecular biological or clinical fields, for example, in DNA sequencing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, for analyzing a trace amount protein or nucleic acid, an electrophoresis apparatus is used. One typical electrophoresis apparatus is a capillary electrophoresis apparatus. The capillary electrophoresis apparatus; however, has a drawback of complicated handling. In order to speed up the analysis and downsize the apparatus, while overcoming the above drawback of the capillary electrophoresis apparatus, an electrophoresis member having a flow channel built in a substrate is proposed.
In an early electrophoresis apparatus, an electrophoresis member having only one electrophoresis flow channel is used, and afterward, an electrophoresis plate having a plurality of electrophoresis flow channels for improving the throughput is proposed (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2004-251680).
In such an electrophoresis plate, two glass substrates are joined and a plurality of very fine electrophoresis flow channels are formed in the joining face.
However, there are a lot of problems to be solved for automating a series of operations for electrophoresis separation such as charging of a loading medium into the electrophoresis flow channels, dispensing of a loading buffer solution to both end parts of the electrophoresis flow channels, dispensing of a sample to one end of each of the electrophoresis flow channels, and application of voltage for electrophoresis separation in the electrophoresis flow channels, using such an electrophoresis plate as described above, and a practically useful electrophoresis apparatus realizing high throughput has not been realized.